Generate: Discard

It is the opposite of "slow and careful." It is fast, messy, and intentionally wasteful.

We suffer from the : "But I spent two hours writing that paragraph!" or "But the AI gave me a perfectly fine image!" generate discard

The sculptor discards marble. The miner discards ore. The writer discards drafts. The AI artist discards renders. It is the opposite of "slow and careful

Ask the AI for three very different versions of the same output. Reject the two that are "fine." Take the third one—the weird one, the broken one—and fix it manually. Or, use the AI to generate 10 variations of a logo or email subject line, then use your human judgment to discard the 9 that feel generic. 3. Software Development (Spike Solutions) In coding, a "spike" is a time-boxed exploration. A programmer will write a messy, hacky version of a feature just to see if it can work. Once they prove the concept, they discard the entire code and write it properly from scratch. The writer discards drafts

Set a timer for 10 minutes. Write 20 headlines, 10 story premises, or 5 opening lines. Do not edit. Do not judge. When the timer ends, walk away. Come back and circle the one that has potential . Delete the rest. 2. Generative AI (Prompt Engineering) The biggest mistake new AI users make is expecting a perfect result from a single prompt. Experts know that the workflow is: Prompt -> Generate -> Review -> Discard -> Iterate.

In the age of optimization, we are obsessed with efficiency. We want the first draft to be perfect. We want the AI prompt to nail it on the first try. We want to skip the mess and land on the masterpiece.